


Plus One

by grammarglamour



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: College, M/M, No Smut, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-09-26 00:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17131952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grammarglamour/pseuds/grammarglamour
Summary: Clay comes back home for winter break after his first semester in college. He and Tony end up going to a bunch of holiday parties together, which exacerbates Clay's complicated feelings.





	1. Tamales

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, fellow Clay/Tony fans! If you want a slow-burn character study about these guys, if you want holiday parties and angst, this is the story for you.

Tamales  

 

Clay’s first semester of college ended peacefully, almost anti-climactically. He finished his finals, tidied up his side of the shared dorm, and bid happy holidays to his roommate. A strange sense of freedom suffused him as he left the dorm and walked to his car to drive back home for break. He didn’t have to drive back, he thought. He could go to San Fransisco instead. He could go south to Las Vegas, or even Los Angeles. Maybe he would just stay in Reno. But no, he did want to see his parents and drink apple cider and do all the silly things they did at Christmastime. So, to his car he went, west to the edge of his known world.

The drive over passed in a blink of an eye, one full rotation of the playlist he’d made special for the occasion. It was his first solo drive of any import. Even moving to UNR’s campus, his parents had been driving ahead of him, both Priuses laden with all the worldly possessions he’d need to start college. Now he was by himself, a semester under his belt, a feeling of misplaced adulthood pulsing him along.

He’d left too early, and thus arrived at his parents’ house just after ten in the morning. It wasn’t a huge deal; they’d be up, even though it was Saturday. He parked in front and gazed at this house that was still kind of his, but also a memory. Lights shone through the curtains and a sense of movement buzzed inside.

He took a deep breath and grabbed his duffel bag, used his key to open the door. Warm air hit him as he leaned in the door, calling a hello. Smells of cinnamon and coffee wafted through the house, a sound of laughter coming in from the kitchen.

“Clay, oh my gosh! We weren’t expecting you so early, honey,” his mom called out. She hurried over into the room, a spatula in one hand, the other covered in pancake batter. He bent down so she could kiss him on the cheek and hug him as best she could with engaged hands. “Come on in and help me with these pancakes. Your dad is terrible at it!”

“Hey, bud!” his dad called out.

He ditched his duffel bag in the foyer and kicked off his shoes, headed into the kitchen. His dad gave him a manly half-hug and a slap on the back.

“So what’s the story on these pancakes?”

“The story is that your dad burned the first batch,” Mom said with a laugh.

“Well, I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t been poking them for all eternity and telling me they were raw in the middle.”

They nuzzled together and kissed in a way Clay had only ever seen after they had a couple glasses of wine. He was glad his absence had done them good, but he was also deeply grossed out. He looked away and inspected the dark brown pancakes sitting on a plate in the middle of the stove.

“They don’t look that bad,” he ventured.

“You eat one, then,” Mom said.

Clay picked one up and took a bite. It really wasn’t bad. Not good, either, but not bad. He shrugged.

“You’re outnumbered, hon,” Dad said.

“Well, I didn’t say they were _good_ ,” Clay clarified.

“Come on, you’re supposed to be the tiebreaker vote.”

“No comment,” he said.

His dad swatted him with a dish towel before reclaiming the spatula and turning his attention back to the stove. Clay helped himself to some coffee and settled in to answer relentless questions from his mom about how finals went, how things were going with his roommate, how the weather was in Reno, and everything about his life that she already knew because she called and texted him frequently. But he answered and tried to slap as pleasant of a smile on his face as he could. The truth, though, was that it annoyed him. Her constant hovering, a simple fact of his life, had been absent for four whole months, and the contrast struck him deeply in that moment. The simple electric hum had been transformed into a wet, wool blanket suffocating him.

He was grateful when his dad finished cooking and the conversation switched to mealtime logistics of passing butter and syrup, getting utensils and plates, and commenting that this batch was so much better than the burnt ones. His dad asked him what he was reading, and he answered gratefully, going on at length about books he had finished a month ago, just to prevent his mom from buzzing back to life.

When it was all over, dishes washed and kitchen back to looking like something from a model home, Clay yawned theatrically and excused himself to go take a nap. Naturally, this prompted Mom to ask about blankets, clean clothes, towels, toiletries –

“I’m not a guest,” he reminded her. “I know where to find stuff.”

“Of course, of course,” she said. “Have a good nap.”

He grabbed his duffel bag from the foyer and bounded up the stairs, leaning against his door when he shut it behind him, indescribably grateful for the cool quiet of his childhood bedroom. Nothing had been changed in there, preserved like a museum exhibit of his teenage life. He flopped onto the bed face-first. He had exaggerated his tiredness to get away from his parents, but hitting the bed made it real and it overtook him, laying there on top of his covers, drooling.

***

Upon waking, Clay started messaging people he thought might be in town. Alex was around, Zach would be coming in a few days, Jessica’s family had moved away. Skye didn’t answer. Tony was in town. Justin, he knew, was in the wind. Mom had told him a while back. They hadn’t seen him since Thanksgiving and he had been in pretty bad shape then.

_What are you doing tonight?_ Tony texted. _My family is doing the annual tamale thing, if you want to join us. It’ll be a fuck-ton of Mexicans, but my sister’s dating a white boy now, so you won’t be the only one here._

_I’d love to. Hell, I’d even go if I was going to be the only white person there._

_Parents that bad already, huh?_

_LOL, yeah, but also I fucking love tamales._

It was true. Tamales were amazing. And he really didn’t mind being the only white person. It would be good for him, since it didn’t happen all that often. And, yeah, the thought of escaping his parents sounded really nice. So, he told them he was going over to Tony’s, and that was that.

Rolling up to Tony’s house a little while later, he had trouble finding a place to park. A wide variety of cars lined the street, from meticulously maintained classics to old beaters and new sedans. Clay squeezed his Prius in between a 1960s Dodge and a late 1990s Honda seemingly held together with Bond-o.

_I’m here_.

Tony came out of the house, dressed down in jeans, t-shirt, and hoodie, no leather jacket or boots. In fact, he wore slippers. His hair was styled enough to be tamed, but mostly left to its own devices. It looked so much softer this way, like something Clay wanted to touch, which he refrained from doing.

“Clay, man, glad you could come over,” he said, pulling Clay into a hug. He was so strong; Clay had no choice but to be enveloped in it. He smelled like cooking and soap.

“Thanks for inviting me. Quite the party, huh?”

“You have no idea. My aunt lives down the street – this is a two-house operation here. In fact – you wanna walk with me to grab some more meat for the tamales?” He pulled a slim, perfectly-packed joint from his pocket. “And help me with this?”

“You’re too good to me,” Clay said.

“I know, man.” Tony lit up the joint and took two rapid hits before handing it to Clay, who followed suit.

They started down the street, the scent of pot following them, adding to the curious waft of spices clouding around Tony.

“How you been, man? How was your semester?”

“Oh, you know. Lots of…classes and papers and figuring out there’s life after high school. What about you?”

Tony shrugged. “Community college is better than high school, but it’s still pretty whatever.”

“So go to a university.”

“Nah, I just want to work on cars and run my dad’s shop. But I want to do it right, so I’ll get my business degree. It just feels like I’m jumping through hoops or whatever.”

Time sort of slowed and the cold December air took on a new dimension and the streetlights glowed orange halos in the darkness. It was only six, but it felt like midnight.

“I think that’s all life is sometimes,” Clay said.

“A lot of it, yeah,” Tony conceded.

They reached Tony’s aunt’s house, and even from the street, Clay heard the sounds of a party happening inside and in the back yard. Tony walked in the house, warmth and the smell of onions and cumin wafting out as he did.

He called out something in Spanish, followed by more Spanish. Clay understood a few words, and that plus Tony walking into the kitchen led him to figure out the gist was that they needed to grab a massive pot that had been cooling off to the side of the stove. Clay was shaky from the weed, but he didn’t want to let Tony down so he held it together enough to help him carry the massive thing out the door and down the street.

“I would have introduced you, but man, my Tia Yolanda gets crazy when she cooks.” He slightly over-pronounced Spanish words, perhaps because they sounded stronger naturally when compared to English or perhaps because he was trying to hold onto some kind of cultural claim with each word. Whatever the reason, it was something that made Tony…well, _Tony_ , and therefore a thing that might have been annoying when other people did it, but not when he did.

“Speaking of, my parents were practically making out over breakfast when I got home this morning.”

“That’s unsettling.”

“Tell me about it. I was, like, afraid to sit at the table, like, _did they have sex here?_ ”

Tony laughed. “Don’t make me laugh while I’m carrying this vat of chicken, man.”

“Sorry.”

Back at Tony’s house, they were hailed as returning heroes for bringing the chicken. You would have thought the place had run out of ingredients entirely. They set it on the counter, and Tony’s mom was immediately there, fluttering over it, digging a fork in to test it while muttering something about Yolanda always putting too much salt in everything.

“Mama, this is Clay.”

“Clay?” She paused, thought about it. “Oh, Clay! Clay, oh my gosh, it is so good to finally meet you. Tony has told me a lot about you, and I keep saying to him, ‘Invite this boy over!’ and he never does. But here you are!” She hugged him and he looked over her shoulder at Tony, who had turned a deep shade of red and was staring down at his slippers like they might help him sink into the floor and away from the situation.

But he didn’t have time to make fun of his friend, because his mom – Elena, he learned, and he was never to call her “Mrs. Padilla” – was taking Clay around the house, introducing him to a flurry of siblings, aunts, and cousins, as well as Tony’s dad. If Tony’s dad remembered the other utterly embarrassing time they had met, he was luckily gracious enough not to mention it, and instead popped open a Modelo and handed it to Clay with a nod.

“You want tomato juice with that?” Tony asked.

“With what?”

“Your beer.”

“Uh, no, plain is fine.”

Tony shrugged as if declining tomato juice for beer was the weird thing, and not the other way around. He drank his beer, glad to have something to do other than smile awkwardly at the names and faces he was doomed to forget in minutes. Elena handed him a plate with two steaming tamales on it.

“Where’s mine?” Tony asked.

“In the steamer, mijo,” she said, kissing his cheek. “You want salsa, Clay? Mijo, show him where the salsa is.”

“Show him where the salsa is, she says,” Tony groused. “Had a free hand, but didn’t bring me a single tamale. That’s cold, Mama.”

“You’ll survive,” she said, squeezing his face and turning her attention to the assembled cousins at the table, putting the tamales together. They were young, but clearly practiced, laughing and talking as they deftly spread masa on the corn husks and filled them with meat, folding them and arranging them neatly on platters. Meanwhile, the adults were eating and drinking and enjoying themselves.

“How did you convince the kids to do all the work?”

“It’s a rite of passage. You’re on tamale duty for a few years, just how it goes.”

“Pretty genius, whoever thought of it.”

“Probably my mom. She’s never been shy about seeing us kids as free labor. She managed to have four boys, one girl, and a goddamn spotless house when we were growing up. Chore chart and everything.”

Clay got the tiniest thrill thinking about high school and imagining Tony cleaning the bathroom at home while going out to meddle in everyone’s lives with the tapes. He had to wonder: was it before or after the meticulous hair styling? Did he wear the leather jacket?

Tony made sure Clay got some salsa and made sure he himself grabbed a tamale from the batch. Clay followed him through the house to a bedroom at the end of the hall. Tony opened the door and led Clay inside. It was extremely small, very neat, and the walls were graced with a mixture of 1980s band posters and car pictures. Tony’s bedroom. Clay had never thought about it before, though of course Tony had one.

They made themselves comfortable on the floor, beer sitting beside them and plates balanced on knees. Tony lit up the remainder of the joint and they refreshed their high before digging into the food, which was now smelling incredible. The sounds of the party drifted down the hall in a distant roar, but a magical silence seemed to set on the small space.

“These tamales are incredible,” Clay said after a couple bites.

“Yeah, Tia Yolanda and my mama know what they’re doing for sure. And Tia doesn’t put too much salt in her cooking. Mama just doesn’t want to admit how good it is. That’s why she does the filling and Mama does the masa and assembly,” Tony explained.

Clay had never before thought of the politics involved in making tamales, so he just nodded sagely and pretended he understood anything about it.

After they finished eating, Tony got up and put a CD on. He of course had an actual stereo, with a tape deck, CD player, and record player component. He put on something vaguely familiar, but Clay couldn’t entirely put his finger on it.

“The Smiths,” Tony said, picking up Clay’s puzzlement.

“Oh yeah. I haven’t listened to them much.”

“Best sad gay boy music there is,” Tony proclaimed. “And Morrissey was a snack back in the day.”

“I’ll trust your expertise on those things.”

Tony fished his phone out of his pocket and typed something in. He turned the screen toward Clay to show him a picture of, he assumed, young Morrissey.

“Okay, good-looking dude.”

“Nobody can resist Morrissey,” Tony proclaimed. “Well, now they probably could. He’s still a good-looking guy, I guess, but he says some dumb shit. But whatever. The Smiths are frozen in time.”

“So, like, how gay are you?” Clay asked. The words rolled out of his mouth before he could catch them.

Tony quirked an eyebrow. “Pretty fucking gay.”

“Like, you’d never hook up with a girl?”

“Well, never say never, but she’d have to be one spectacular girl,” Tony said. “Why?”

Clay shrugged. “Just curious. Something I think about from time to time, you know? About people, and what they think of themselves or whatever.”

“I never really thought about it, as such,” Tony said, sprawling out on the floor. The room was so small that his feet grazed the opposite wall. “It was just, like, I knew and it made sense.”

“Yeah, I guess I get that.”

“How straight are you?” Tony shot back.

The question caught Clay off-guard as he was taking a sip of beer, causing him to splutter a little. “Well, I don’t know. I…haven’t thought about it.”

That was a total lie. He thought about it all the time, tried to understand where one thing ended and the other began, what the parameters of his desires were, but he couldn’t articulate it. He didn’t want to. But if he ever figured it out, he did suppose Tony would be the first person he talked to about it.

“Never say never?” Tony asked.

“Something like that.”

Tony held his gaze longer than Clay would have liked, his eyes searching him with the intensity of a spotlight. Those amber eyes, changeable and malleable, as always hid and concealed in equal measure. Clay could never really read Tony, had to go by his actions and not words or his gaze.

One of Tony’s brothers spilled into the room, shattering their peace. Clay couldn’t be too miffed, as it saved him from Tony’s eyes and the questions they held.

“Goddamn, our family has too many kids,” he said, flopping down on Tony’s bed. “Loud little shits.”

“Clay, meet Eddie. Eddie, meet Clay.”

Eddie reached down and low-fived Clay. “What up, man? Good to see Tony has actual friends. I was starting to think they were all in his head or something.”

“Nope, I’m real. He even has, like, two others.”

Tony’s glare wasn’t ambiguous this time. _Traitor_ , he was clearly thinking.

Eddie was off talking about how annoying the kids were, how he was going to wait as long as he possibly could to have any, and how no woman could ever really tame his wild ways. This led to a subsequent musing about various women he was talking to at the moment, all of which information went in one ear and out the other. Clay asked the bare minimum of questions and Tony merely grunted and hummed in response. Eddie remained oblivious to his audience’s disinterest, which Clay actually found pretty impressive. To be that self-absorbed and free of what others thought must be nice.

“Almost forgot: Tia Luz came a while ago and she brought the biggest fucking tres leches cake I’ve ever seen. Her and Tio Bobby had to carry it in together.”

“Eddie, life tip for you: Always lead with cake. If there’s cake, don’t rattle on about the fucking thots you’ve got on the hook. Talk about the cake. And then the thots,” Tony said, getting up off the floor. He paused at the door. “Actually, just talk about the cake.”

Clay had to agree.

They rejoined the party and left Eddie in Tony’s room, confused and probably texting one of his said thots. Clay got swept up in conversations with various aunts, uncles, and siblings. Several of the youngest cousins stared openly at him, and one asked if he was sick.

“No, I’m not,” he said.

“Then why you so white and skinny?” the kid asked. He couldn’t have been more than six, but Clay admittedly had no idea how to gauge children’s ages, having zero experience with them since he himself was a child.

“He’s a white boy,” Tony told the kid.

“Well duh,” the kid said, “but he’s like the whitest person I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah? Well, you’re only seven. Go play. And don’t ask people why they’re so white.”

“Whatever. He is.” And the kid was off into his crowd of fellow cousins.

“Sorry about that,” Tony said.

“No, it’s fair. I’m extra white.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything, but…yeah, you are.”

Elena came over, then, with two plates of cake. Clay looked over into the kitchen and saw the aforementioned tres leches cake. It was the size of a car door.

“So, what are the three milks?”

“Regular milk, sweetened condensed milk, and whipped cream,” Tony said.

“Jesus Christ. That’s…a lot.”

“Yeah, it is. But it’s so good.”

Clay took a bite and discovered that Tony wasn’t kidding. Sweet and cold, it rehydrated his mouth, dry from the weed. The milk plumped the crumb of the cake, making each bite seem almost like custard.

“Holy fuck.”

“Right?”

He savored each bite, thinking that his mom’s valiant attempts at baking could never have prepared him for this.

In fact, few things in his life could have prepared him for this. His parents didn’t come from big families either, so family gatherings usually fit at someone’s dining room table and didn’t involve extra houses and assembly lines of food preparation. He had never been in a house with so many people, all related to one another, all laughing and arguing good-naturedly about soccer or cars or TV shows. Kids ran around people’s legs and the furniture, laughing. It was loud and chaotic, but Clay knew it was life the way it should be lived and not in a cavernous hideaway of nervous energy like his parents’ house.

He sobered up a while later, not ready to rejoin his actual life, but definitely ready for bed. He departed amid hugs, handshakes, and an admonition from Elena not to be a stranger and to come by again any time. Tony walked him to his car, into the deafening nighttime silence of the street, and stood there a moment in the cold.

“Thanks for inviting me,” Clay said.

“You’re welcome. It wasn’t too crazy?”

“Crazy in the best way.”

Tony smiled, looked relieved. “Good. See you round?”

“You better,” he said, getting into his car and driving off.

The whole ride home, all he could think about was Tony and how comfortable he looked, how at ease with everything. Even with that little kid, he slipped into the role of adult. Tony had mastered a balance of being his own person and being a part of a family. Clay could never figure that out. Maybe it was a cultural thing, or maybe just his own family and his own fears. Clay felt himself drawn more into Tony’s orbit, but he couldn’t bring himself to examine it too closely just yet. He wanted to let this electricity zinging through his body dissipate a little.

The shocking silence of his house settled on him as he walked in. It was dark and smelled like those weird sticks that his mom got at Pier One or wherever that she marinated in oil. It didn’t smell like cooking, or people, or anything really. The only evidence that anyone actually lived there was a pile of mail on the kitchen counter.

He felt like an ungrateful little shit – he knew he was – but he wanted more than muted neutral colors and an empty house in his life. He didn’t know what he wanted, but he figured knowing what he _didn’t_ want was a decent enough start.

***


	2. Young and Stupid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clay invites Tony, Zach, and Alex to his parents' boring Christmas party. They get into some wine and some weed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dedicate this fic to all the people out there suffering through shitty Christmas parties.

Young and Stupid

 

A few days before Christmas, Mom reminded him of the annual Christmas party that they held. It was a boring and nearly-silent affair he had endured ever since he had been old enough to be “allowed” to stay up late and attend. These soirees involved a boring collection of his parents’ colleagues descending on the house bearing wine and potluck dishes, chatting quietly and earnestly about their professions, and largely ignoring him except to ask him about school. These things were excruciating, and he knew they would be even worse this year, though the only change would be an internal one. Anticipating this awfulness, he asked to invite Zach, Alex, and Tony, which his parents enthusiastically agreed to, having always been so worried about his loner tendencies in high school.

He sent out a group text. Alex’s response was, _Jesus, yes, get me the fuck out of this house,_ and Tony said, _This will be nowhere near the good time I showed you, but okay._ Zach said, _I don’t care how boring it is, as long as my mother isn’t there._

Clay found it comforting that he had people to commiserate with.

Standing in his room, he looked around. The sloped ceiling and the excessive posters made the room seem smaller, even though it wasn’t small at all. There were plenty of places to sit, plenty of space to stretch out and play games or whatever. Also, why did he have a Cure poster? He didn’t like The Cure all that much. So he took the posters down and rolled them up carefully, taped them shut, and stowed them away in the top of his closet. He puttered around, turning the pillows on the couch this way and that, asking himself if he was a diamonds or squares guy. He decided diamonds. Somehow, putting the pillows vertically looked classier. Maybe it was the diagonals.

Later that evening, Mom came up to get him for dinner, and she paused in the doorway, looking around. She was such a raging cliché: The worried mom seeing her baby boy growing up. Worse than that, he felt more than anything that she was merely _acting_ that way and not really feeling it. After all, it was only natural. He was eighteen, almost nineteen. He should be growing up, taking down posters, cleaning up, figuring out how he liked his throw pillows arranged, whatever. He should be figuring out what foods he liked, what music that wasn’t just what he heard on the radio or from his parents. Whether he liked guys or girls or both or people in between or no one at all. Those kinds of things. Although, if given a choice, he’d way rather think about throw pillows or basically anything else in the world than that last one.

“You okay?” he asked his mom as she stared in melodramatic tearfulness.

“Yeah, fine.” She pointed at a darker spot in the paint. “Your posters left marks. We’ll have to paint in here.” Threat or promise?

***

Clay didn’t like the way Dennis Velasquez was looking at Tony. It wasn’t creepy or anything. Just the opposite. He looked like he smelled a memoir and an Oscar-winning film in his future. Wouldn’t it just be perfect? In one corner, Tony, troubled Mexican gay youth, complete with leather jacket. In another corner, Dennis, so squeaky clean he probably farted soap bubbles. He probably never got a bad grade in his life. He could mentor Tony, keep him on the straight (so to speak) and narrow.

Clay gave him his most set-jawed scowl and merely nodded when Dennis waved warmly at them, but Tony waved back even as he muttered under his breath.

“Keep walkin’,” he muttered. “I see you looking at me like you can’t wait for them to put us on the Big Brothers, Big Sisters poster. Pendejo.”

“That means ‘asshole,’ right?”

“Sure does.” Tony shook it off when Dennis was out of sight. “Anyway, when are Zach and Alex getting here?”

“Any time. Have you seen Alex at all?”

Tony nodded. “We run into each other on campus sometimes. He’s…you know…Alex. Walking better, at least.”

Until then, they casually slipped out to the back yard and shared a joint. They stood in the side yard, a remote rectangle of grass by the fence, where a laurel bush obscured the lights of the back deck. Most of the light came from a high moon casting a blue-gray shadow over everything. Tony looked ghostly, and Clay – thinking back to Tony’s young cousin – figured he looked like a corpse.

The party itself was so muted with nothing but a soft murmur of cultured voices. Women sat on the back deck wrapped in expensive pashminas, while the men wore sport jackets and chunky sweaters. Between the do-gooder set from Mom’s work, and the liberal arts jerkoffs from Dad’s school, it was a lot of frizzy gray hair, handmade jewelry, tortoise shell glasses, and long sweeping hippie skirts.

“So this is how white people do Christmas parties, huh?”

“No, some white people manage to have fun. Just not my parents. They aren’t even fun-adjacent.”

“Well, I’m sure these folks think this is fun,” Tony said.

“True. But who am I to talk? I don’t really do fun either.”

“Okay, sure, but at least you’re good to talk to. I wouldn’t want to talk to any of those wet dish towels over there.”

“Thanks. Glad I rate higher than a wet dish towel.”

Tony smacked Clay’s arm. “You know what I mean.”

Further commentary got cut short as Clay’s phone buzzed. A text from Zach: _We’re here_. Clay told Tony and they slipped out the side gate to meet the other guys.

It was sort of weird seeing them. It was the first time since the end of the summer, right before he left for Reno and Zach left for Michigan. They didn’t look any different: Zach was still sport-casual, with nice jeans and a button-down shirt, and Alex was still dressed in carefully-curated thrift store fare. His hair was still short, his scar prominent, but he was still Alex.

They all said their hellos with half-hugs and slaps on the back, quick run-downs of how everyone fared in classes and what they were taking next semester. Clay supposed this wasn’t any different than the stultified banter happening amongst his parents’ colleagues, the only difference being that he actually gave a shit what Zach, Alex, and Tony were up to.

They finished off the joint together and found Clay’s parents. They were sitting in the living room having an earnest conversation with a frizzy-haired woman in an aggressively velvet scarf. Its swirling patterns mesmerized Clay as the last couple hits from the joint snuck up on him.

“Uh, hi, Mom and Dad,” he said slowly, over-pronouncing each word as though trying to get his point across to a deaf preschooler that didn’t speak English. The looks on their faces as they turned to him let him know that they knew he was now baked out of his gourd. “So, Alex and Zach are here.”

“Nice to see you boys,” Mom said, smiling.

“We’re going to…my room.”

“Sounds like a good idea, champ,” Dad said.

Clay nodded while Alex giggled behind him. Tony rolled his eyes and Zach smiled awkwardly, trying to be polite even in the face of Clay being totally unable to handle his weed.

They found the potluck spread in the kitchen and loaded plates with whatever salads, cookies, pieces of cake, cheese, and charcuterie they could find. In addition, Tony slipped two bottles of wine into his jacket with such finesse, it was almost like the bottles were hitching a ride with him by pre-arranged agreement.

“That was _professional_ ,” Alex complimented as they filed into Clay’s room. Clay put on some music while they settled in around the couch and table with their bounty.

Clay ate aimlessly as his friends talked. He felt his consciousness growing too big for his body, this swell inside his mind, barely tethered to the meat suit that he used to awkwardly pilot it through the world. At one point, he put a slice of sharp cheddar on top of a thick rectangle of pumpkin bread, and it was the best decision he made in a while. The solid fatty cheese and moist bread never really became one, even as he chewed them, and it was like eating two things at once. Well, it was literally that, but it was like eating two things at once that didn’t interact with each other, despite sharing the same space.

He swallowed and took a deep breath, emerging from these thoughts like surfacing from cold water.

“What’d I miss?” he asked.

“Nothing, dude. We were just talking about school.” Zach looked at him with worried exasperation.

“Right. Of course.”

The wine got passed around eventually. It deepened Clay’s high and made him sleepy. Following conversation became difficult, but he managed.

“This is actually decent wine,” Zach said at one point, looking at the bottle.

Clay shrugged. “My parents know some very fancy people.”

“Yeah, so does my mom,” Zach said.

“My dad pretends like he doesn’t know fancy people. You know? Like, he knows all these higher-ups in all these cop agencies and shit, but they all sit around drinking shitty beer and talking about sports like they were blue-collar guys,” Alex said, squinting, as though his father and friends were on the horizon somewhere.

Tony stayed silent, which Clay understood. His family wasn’t poor, but neither were they fancy. Tony had always made a big deal about things being different in his part of town, and this was one of those things. His family had done well, but they wouldn’t – or maybe couldn’t – cross over into the world of expensive wines and muted potlucks. He tried to imagine Tony’s family moving next door, with Tony and all his siblings and their family that took up two houses when they had parties.

Clay picked up a deviled egg and wished it was a tamale.

***

At some point, Clay must have fallen asleep – or, more accurately, passed out. He awoke to a silent house and a light still on in his room. Alex and Zach were passed out on opposite ends of the couch. Tony was curled up on the floor with a blanket half-covering him and one sock off. Clay had made it to his bed, though he managed to wrap himself in one corner of his comforter and leave most of himself uncovered and cold.

He sat up, which he immediately regretted, as it activated a dull thump in his head. His mouth felt warm and cottony. This situation needed remedying, so he stumbled downstairs and into the kitchen, where he gulped two full glasses of water while standing over the sink.

Empty wine bottles and dirty dishes littered the kitchen, so he started picking through them at a snail’s pace. Bottles went into the recycling, dishes got sorted and rinsed before going in the dishwasher.

Well, at least he had fun for the first time at his parents’ stupid holiday party. Had fun because he wasn’t really in the party, but still. As with so many things in his life, it was a normal thing that he had always felt guilty over. An eighteen-year-old dude should absolutely have more fun with his friends than his parents’ colleagues. He should be skunking wine and smoking joints and eating cheddar with pumpkin bread. And if his parents expected anything else of him, they were the ones being dumb.

He shut off the water decisively, turning to the next pile of dishes, and the sound of someone shuffling into the room made him turn around. Tony stood there, hair actually mussed, looking on the verge of tears.

“I found my sock.”

Clay poured him a glass of water and another for himself. He set it down on the table and pulled out a chair, which Tony slid into like his legs were giving out. “Where was your sock?”

“In my pocket.”

“Why…?”

“I think I remember something about ‘for safe-keeping’? I don’t know, dude.” Tony drank his water and laid his head on the cool table.

“Sounds vaguely familiar, but who knows?”

“Mixing weed and wine was a terrible idea. Whose idea was it?”

“It wasn’t an idea,” Clay said. “More like a destiny.”

“A shitty destiny.”

He had to agree.

They sat in stunned, sickened silence for a while, neither quite knowing how to proceed. Food? Coffee? What? It was four in the morning.

Alex and Zach joined them eventually, red-eyed and bewildered.

“Why did we do that?” Zach asked.

“We’re young and stupid,” Alex said.  

***

They said their goodbyes and Clay sent his friends off into the cold, gray morning. He stood at the door and watched them leave, Tony in the Mustang, the other two in Zach’s car. He wondered what their parents’ different reactions would be. He knew that even now, had he passed out drunk and came home at five in the morning, his mom would have been passive-aggressively anxious for days afterward. She wouldn’t have done anything extreme like call the cops and try to report him missing, but she’d subtly bitch at him until she was over it or he committed some other infraction.

He had spent a lot of time the past semester talking to his roommate, Nick. Nick was from Sacramento and had normal parents. They were divorced, but friendly, and they had always dropped him and his sister off at one another’s house, talked for a little while, and said their goodbyes. If Nick fucked up – and he did, on occasion – they talked to him, took away privileges, restored them, and moved on. No bullshit about no locked doors, open doors, or whatever else. No excessive worrying or trying to be his friend, or whatever. They were parents, and they acted like it. Clay suspected Tony’s parents were similar. He thought of the chore chart. He’d never really had to do chores. He sort of did them because he liked having a clean space, but it wasn’t like anyone _made_ him do it. He took out the trash because he didn’t like the smell.

But as he sat there in his room, in this huge house, surrounded by all the things his parents’ hard work had provided for him, he felt that irrepressible guilt bubbling up again. How dare he criticize them? But how dare he not? They provided the material things, but here he was, eighteen years old, in university and vaguely majoring in psychology with no idea as to what he wanted to do with it. He told people it was because he had a friend who killed herself and he wanted to help people like her, but that was as much to convince himself as to inform anyone else. If he told enough people, maybe he could believe it. So far, it hadn’t worked, and he was thinking of changing his major to math and becoming an accountant. At least numbers could never have ulterior motives. No deaths would be on his hands if he did that.

***

 


	3. Regular Guy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clay argues with his mom, goes to see Tony, and ends up at another holiday party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feed me kudos and comments.

Regular Guy

Mom trying to act casual was pathetic at best. At worst, it made Clay cringe himself into a cramp. He loved her, he knew that, and he had to remind himself of it often. But at the moment, with her standing next to him at the kitchen counter and trying to act natural, he didn’t like her much.

He just wanted to drink some coffee and do a crossword puzzle. He’d been sitting there doing such for a little bit when she sidled up and straightened the mail on the counter, rearranged some canisters of sugar and flour, and wiped down the counters. She cleared her throat and Clay tensed.

“I’m glad you got to see your friends,” she said.

“Yeah, me too. Seems like everyone is doing okay, which is good.”

“Absolutely.”

There would be more to this, he knew, but damn if he would give it to her. In any case, he knew she’d take it herself anyway.

“And I’m glad you got to spend some extra time with Tony Padilla.”

“He’s a good guy,” Clay agreed. It was as much as he was willing to give her, and only because speaking up on Tony’s behalf was second nature at this point.

“You know, Dennis Velasquez—”

“Tony isn’t interested.”

“Come on, Clay, you don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Dennis Velasquez wants to mentor Tony, take him out of the hood, show him a taste of that middle-class good life?”

“Clay, that’s so unfair—”

“Unfair is assuming that Tony’s some kind of hardship case. His family owns a house and a business and he’s going to school so he can run that business properly. Tony is fine, Mom.” Clay gulped some coffee, which he instantly regretted, as it was still a little too hot. He didn’t choke though, even as his throat burned.

“No one said he wasn’t! It’s just that Dennis believes people of color—”

“Dennis knows where to find Tony. He doesn’t need to do this bullshit. What’s he want me to do? Deliver a note to Tony that’s like, ‘Do you want me to mentor you? Check yes or no’? Drop it in his locker?” Tony’s voice echoed in Clay’s head. _Pendejo_. “Tony thinks that dude is an asshole, and I agree with him.”

He took his crossword and coffee and went to his room, which was really where he should have stayed in the first place. Like he didn’t have everything he needed there? She followed him up and stood in the doorway with that goddamn look on her face, that do-gooder lawyer look, that look of smug superiority like she alone had the power to save all the orphans from her ivory tower.

“Clay, are you okay? Really okay? I know freshman year is stressful.”

He rubbed his eyes and wished she’d be gone when he opened them again. Of course, she wasn’t. “I’m fine. College is going fine. Better, even, considering I don’t have people doing shit like throwing a sack over my head and kicking me senseless in the locker room. Or how about the time Bryce put me in the hospital? No one in college threatens you until you drink a forty. I could go on.”

She winced at each recollection of horrible shit he went through in high school, and those weren’t even the highlights. Part of him felt bad, but another part of him was just angry. Of course, he wasn’t even angry at her, but she was _there_ and looking so goddamned pathetic. But then again, maybe he did blame her and his dad a little. After all, there were gifted programs and private schools. There was dual enrollment at the community college. There had been options that would have gotten him out of Liberty, but his parents didn’t take them, even after Hannah, even after things started coming out.

“Why can’t you just talk to me?” she asked.

“Because you just want me to tell you it’s okay. Or if it isn’t okay, you want some kind of plan, like medication. I took those, I went to therapy, but you know what? You want to know the real fucking kicker? I have felt better these last four months because I wasn’t here. Wasn’t in this shit-ass town, and – and—” Was he really going to say it? Would he hit the red button, that nuclear option? “And I wasn’t here with you or Dad, looking at me like – like – I don’t even know!”

It hung in the air between them, finally. Something the Jensen family had rarely ever seen: honesty. Mom sagged against the door, tears in her eyes, and Clay sat there at his desk fidgeting with the cap of his pen.

Finally, she cleared her throat. “Believe what you want to believe, but we only ever did anything because we love you. We still love you.”

What a bunch of hackneyed bullshit. He doubted parents could ever really love their children. They loved the control that parenting brought, and they loved the righteous tension they gained when they no longer had it. But did they really love their kids? The actual individuals, and not the ideas they had of cute gap-toothed ragamuffins?

“Also, try to handle yourself better. You were a mess the other night. Regina commented on it after you all left. If you’re going to smoke pot, at least try to keep yourself together in front of people.” Her voice had the wind chill of a mountain gust.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She wrapped her oversized sweater tight around her. “Me too.”

Her soft footsteps echoed through the big, empty house and he thought about how they’d probably sell it someday because it was too big for only two people. Someday, some other guy would be fighting with his mom in this room.

His concentration was shattered, the puzzle laying forgotten on his desk. He stood up, sat back down, stood back up, paced, and then pulled out his phone. He entertained the thought of texting Zach or Alex, or even trying Skye again, but he decided against it. He would text Tony. He’d choose Tony ten out of ten times, he knew, and anything else was just a façade.

_Hey, what are you up to?_

_Working. What do you need?_

_Nothing important. Just trying to get out of the house._

_Everything okay?_

_Yeah, just arguing with my mom as usual._

_Well, you can come down to the shop. It’s slow here._

Was it just a courtesy invite? Part of him thought it must be and that he should say no. But another part of him wanted to get out of the house, and he rationalized that Tony didn’t do things just to be polite. He grabbed his keys and phone and went down to his car.

 ***

He parked his car among the old beaters and scrap heaps in front of the Padillas’ shop. He hovered at the edge of the main garage before calling out for Tony.

“Back here,” he yelled.

He followed the sound of Tony’s voice to a back workroom where he had a multitude of small parts laid out on a towel, rebuilding something-or-other. Clay didn’t bother asking; he wouldn’t know, and he didn’t want to smile and nod along.

Tony nodded hello and pointed to a bench. “You want to talk about it or opt for manly silence?”

“It was really dumb.”

Tony shrugged. “A lot of stuff is. Doesn’t mean it won’t bother us.”

“Good point. Well, she was trying to tell me about how Dennis Velasquez wants you to join the brown Chamber of Commerce or whatever.”

“Yeah? Sounds like the opposite of fun.”

“See, I knew you weren’t into it. I told her that, like, your family owns a business, you know? You’re going to school. And you’re a damn good mechanic. So you’re not going to be a lawyer! Maybe the world doesn’t need so many lawyers, you know?” Clay laid down on the bench, put one knee up, and ran his hand through his hair.

“My experiences with lawyers haven’t been that great, that’s for sure,” Tony said.

“Exactly. And then it turned into this whole thing of ‘are you okay?’ and ‘college is stressful’ and her usual concerned bullshit. Like, so what if college is stressful? It’s only stressful because it’s so important, unlike high school, which is like a video game at this point, trying to get out alive and unscathed,” he said, reaching his arms to the heavens, ranting at full steam.

“I’d say we both got pretty well scathed,” Tony pointed out.

“Right? Like, I got put in the hospital, you got your car totally fucked up – the list fucking goes on. And, like, it’s behind us, but college is easy compared to that shit.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “It’s nice to just sort of chill and talk to people without brawls breaking out.”

“And my parents are, like, really stealthy nightmare people, you know? They seem nice, but my mom is a basket-case and my dad is basically checked out. He doesn’t know what to talk to me about because we don’t like the same things and he doesn’t understand anything that isn’t literature,” he said.

“I hear you. I don’t remember the last time I had a conversation with my dad that wasn’t about soccer or cars. He never asks who I’m dating, but he always asks my brothers. I act like I don’t notice, but I do,” he said.

“That’s tough,” Clay replied.

“It is. I mean, sure, we have cars and soccer. That’s something. But it isn’t everything.”

“It isn’t,” Clay agreed. He sat up. “I’m sorry I barged in here and brought all this stuff up.”

Tony waved it off with a grease-smeared hand. “Nah, it’s okay. What are the holidays for, right?”

“I guess.”

The conversation tapered off, and Clay pulled out his phone, scrolling through his various “news” feeds for a bit while Tony finished up whatever it was that he was doing. He liked the amicable silence and the understanding between them. He had that a little with his roommate Nick. They talked quite a bit, but they also spent many evenings in pleasant silence. It didn’t have to be all soul-baring and seriousness, which high school always felt like. It was weird to have all that drama behind him. It seemed so contrived now, but maybe that was just hindsight. There would come a day when fights with his mom felt quaint and silly, too, he guessed.

He snuck a look at Tony. He wore a blue work shirt, his name stitched over the pocket, which had a pen and a tire gauge in it. His work pants were loose, unlike the jeans he usually wore, which fit like women’s jeans. Boots completed the picture, sturdy and utilitarian, made to avoid slips and protect from heavy items. He looked older, powerfully masculine, with an air of confident maturity that came from knowing oneself. Except for his height, Clay felt like a kid next to Tony.

Something about Tony drew him in yet again, as it always had. He had always felt a sort of admiration for him, being himself and not going with the crowd, which Clay had desperately tried to do most of his life. He didn’t want to stand out at all for any reason – academics, sports, arts, looks, nothing. But then Hannah came along, and he wanted to stand out, if only to her. When she died, that energy diffused, and along with it came all that ugliness she exposed. Clay couldn’t stick his head in the sand anymore after that. He got angry, got vengeful in his way. And now…he didn’t know. But Tony knew. He knew himself, knew the ways he wanted to stand out, and he went for them. Car, clothes, being gay – everything. Tony just did it. How? How could a person just be okay with being looked at?

The nuts and bolts spread out on the dirty towel had dwindled, and what appeared in their place was something recognizable at least as a mostly-whole mechanism. Finally, Tony set in the last piece with a flourish and turned to Clay, wiping his hands.

“What are you doing tonight?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I have a lame party to go to. Want to help me with that?”

“I don’t know,” Clay said. “How lame are we talking? Lamer than my parents’ party?”

“Yeah, if you can believe that. Well, I had fun that night, but only because of you guys. Other than that, it would have sucked. But anyway, I sort of joined the gay-straight alliance at the community college, so…I’m going to their holiday party.” He shrugged, but there was something unusually forced about it, a tension in his face like he was holding his breath while waiting for Clay to answer.

The possibility rattled Clay slightly. A gay party? That was a whole new thing. And the idea of Tony joining any club was weird in itself. But at the same time, Clay felt like he should go. Those nagging thoughts he had been having for months – years, if he was having a rare moment of honesty – bubbled up and demanded answers. One party might not answer all his questions, but it would be a start. He wasn’t like Ryan Shaver, he knew that, and of course he wasn’t like Tony, but maybe there was some other place for him, Clay, the guy whose love for a dead girl had faded to warm affection and whose PornHub selections had recently expanded to include guys.

“Yeah,” he said, “I’ll go.”

The look of relief on Tony’s face kindled an uncomfortable twitch deep in Clay’s belly, but he wouldn’t dream of rescinding. Whatever was happening next, like the wine the other night, was now not so much a choice as a destiny.

***

He texted Mom and let her know that he would be home late. Even her _Okay, be safe_ had seemed pained to him, but whatever. Tony drove them to a house near the community college, a run-down affair clearly meant to be rented out short-term. The lawn was on the verge of dying completely and the paint was sloughing off the trim in chunks. But whoever lived here had put up lights and tinsel in the yellowing shrubs outside – a sign, Clay thought, that someone cared.

“So the gay-straight alliance?” he asked Tony as they sat in the car and passed a flask back and forth.

“Yeah. Well, there was a cute guy involved.”

“Isn’t there always?”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“So who is this guy?”

Tony shook his head and tipped a massive swig of whiskey down his throat. “Turned out to be a flake. Dropped out halfway through the semester to work on a weed farm.”

“That sucks.”

“I don’t know. Feel kind of like I dodged a bullet. He was so cute, though. Damn shame.”

“What, um, what do you find cute? In a guy, I mean.”

Tony flashed him a sidelong glance, and Clay felt exposed.

“You know, I have no idea. In high school, it was just, like, any guy who was even remotely gay and attractive. Like, Ryan. I wouldn’t look twice at him now. And Brad. He was cute but so boring. So I don’t know. I guess I’m figuring it out. Like, after Ryan, I know I don’t want any dramatic dudes. And after Brad, I want someone interesting. And after Caleb, I want someone who isn’t obsessed with his body. I guess just a regular guy.”

Clay shifted in his seat and fiddled with the string on his hoodie. He didn’t try to think it – in fact, he tried hard _not_ to – but he couldn’t help it: _I’m a regular guy_.

“Well, I guess the good thing there is that regular guys are, you know, regular…so there are probably a lot of them,” he joked, hoping Tony didn’t notice how unsure he sounded.

“Yeah, you’d think. But the question is: Are they into guys? You just never know with some people,” Tony said.

“True,” Clay said. And then he took a major gamble: “Probably a lot of them just don’t know what they want, either. And they know they don’t want to hurt anyone in the process. But maybe they are into guys and just want to figure out how to, like, be into guys.”

Tony took one last swig of whiskey and passed the flask to Clay. He nodded contemplatively and said, “Yeah, you’re probably right. Well, hopefully some of those cute regular guys know that some of us cute regular guys are here for them if they need someone to talk to. Or make out with.”

“You’re hardly a regular guy,” Clay whispered. He didn’t mean to whisper; maybe the whiskey burned his voice out a little.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know.” He swallowed hard and tried to regain some semblance of cool. “So, uh, this party?”

“Right.” Tony nodded and got out of the car, though he looked like he didn’t want to. Clay was mad at himself. He’d had the chance to answer some major questions and he totally fucked it up.

They went to the door and knocked. A tall, long-haired person of indeterminate gender answered, clad all in black with black fingernails. “Tony! I’m so glad you could make it!”

The person’s voice didn’t reveal their gender, nor did Tony greeting them and calling them “Jordan.” He supposed it wasn’t really his concern, though he wanted to know. He’d add it to the list of mysteries that had formed in his world.

Introductions went around, and Jordan led them into a small living room where a few people were sitting around with red plastic cups. Festive holiday-themed bowls were dotted around, filled with Chex mix and candies. Jordan introduced the people, but as with all the other myriad holiday parties Clay had been to recently, their names slipped his mind almost immediately. He needed to get better about that, knew it was rude, but a crudely utilitarian part of his mind dictated that he didn’t need the information.

They fell into the conversation happening around them, and Tony was a natural at it, even though the kids around them were a varied bunch, to say the least. He laughed and joked with them about some anime. Clay didn’t even know Tony was into anime. He felt guilty about that. There were so many things he didn’t know about Tony, boring things that friends should know, like whether he preferred Coke or Pepsi or what he liked on his pizza. But then again, Clay reasoned, that might not be the sum of Tony, the things that made him who he was. Clay knew he had an iron-clad code he lived by, knew he cared about his family, knew he stuck up for his friends. But those were all deep and serious things.

This tumble down the rabbit hole in his mind was interrupted by a Cheeto hitting him upside the head. He ate it, much to the disgust and delight of the crowd. He laughed along with them and rejoined the conversation, contributing lame one-liners and dad jokes. It all felt so normal.

Conversation ebbed and flowed throughout the night, some of it superficial and some more serious. No one asked him for his credentials to be there, where he stood in the “gay-straight” spectrum. And even though the crowd was a little weirder than what he was used to, they were nice enough.

Midnight came and went, drunkenness turned to tiredness, and a skinny boy with a nasal voice turned a laser-eyed gaze toward Clay. “So Tony, why didn’t you mention your cute boyfriend before?”

Tony turned a deep brick red and stuttered, “He’s not – no, Clay isn’t—”

“Oh,” the boy said, smug. “Could have fooled me.”

“Come on, chill out, Braden,” a blue-haired girl wearing cat ears said.

“What? It was an honest mistake.”

“Yeah, but you don’t need to make a big deal out of it.”

“It’s fine,” Clay said. “I’m not Tony’s boyfriend, though. Too bad for Tony, right?”

Nervous laughter rippled around the room, but a spell had been broken. Conversation became stilted, punctuated by tense silences. People started standing up, excusing themselves, and leaving. The group dwindled quickly, including Clay and Tony, who went and sat in Tony’s car with a wet blanket of silence between them.

“You okay to drive?” Clay asked at length.

“Yeah,” Tony said, starting the ignition as though he had just remembered what he was doing there.

Clay tried staring out the windshield as they drove back to the garage to get his car, but the motion made him woozy. He cracked a window and stared down at his lap instead.

“ _You_ gonna be okay to drive?” Tony asked.

“Yeah. Just need some air.”

“I’m sorry about Braden.”

“Don’t be,” Clay said. “He probably has a crush on you and he’s too jealous and immature to do anything productive about it.”

“Maybe. He’s definitely not my ‘type’. Less regular guy and more basic bitch.”

Clay laughed at that, a hoarse borderline sob. “Let’s get out of here.”

Tony obliged, flinging the Mustang into gear and shooting out into the icy night.


	4. Auld Lang Syne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clay and Tony go to a New Year's party. You can guess what happens at midnight.

Auld Lang Syne

They largely avoided each other over Christmas proper, which Clay didn’t necessarily like but knew he had to endure. He had the excuse of Christmas – somber dinner with his parents, a Face-Time with the grandparents, exchanging gifts – to take a break from seeing or texting Tony. They extended holiday greeting olive branches, signs that their last interaction was awkward but not shattering.

Skye came out of the woodwork, finally, two days after Christmas. She sent him a text inviting him to a New Year’s Eve party at her apartment, and he was free to bring a guest. He thought about maybe asking Alex. Something about the thin, brooding boy with the wide scar traversing his scalp seemed like it would appeal to Skye, and setting them up seemed almost natural. But then, if a person invited Alex, they also got Zach in the package, and he figured that even if Zach was an atypical jock, that was too much jock presence for Skye. The solution became obvious: He would ask Tony. Going alone didn’t cross his mind any more than inviting his mom along did.

_So Skye invited me to a New Year’s party and said I could bring someone, so I thought I would ask you. But feel free to say no. I know you probably got invited to a bunch of parties._

_You overestimate my social standing. Anyway, she already invited me. Who’s driving?_

_I’ll drive._

And that was that. The following three days had Clay bouncing around in nervous energy. He hated that week between Christmas and New Year’s, a week of dried-out leftovers, wrapping paper stuck to your heels, and a feeling of anticipation that couldn’t be shaken off.

The first step was to clean his room meticulously and thoroughly. He went so far as to move the furniture around and vacuum underneath, finding all manner of disturbing things like long-lost socks stiff as a board and withered brown orange peels. He’d never thought of himself as being messy before, but these artifacts indicated otherwise. He vowed to check under his dorm bed when he got back to school.

Then he had coffee with Alex and Zach to pass an afternoon. They bickered relentlessly, giving each other shit for the coffee they ordered, the places they chose to sit, the way each flirted with different baristas. Talk about confusing two people for a couple. Clay wondered if there wasn’t something they weren’t telling him.

Bickering aside, coffee was nice. He liked being out of the house and away from his mom’s heavy sighing. The flirtations between her and Dad had cooled over the holidays, and he couldn’t help the guilt burrowing in his mind that told him it was all his fault for being there and being such an ingrate.

When the day of the party rolled around, Clay was in a tailspin, worried about everything from what he was going to wear down to what he would talk to Tony about. Both concerns were stupid, as his wardrobe only contained two basic outfits in a few different colors and talking to Tony had never been difficult.

Funny, one thing he didn’t stress over was seeing Skye. They had started texting again after graduation and kept at it throughout the semester, just the occasional check-in. She seemed like she was doing well, her medication keeping the darkness at bay enough for her to focus on her art. She was doing some art cars for rich Burners, which seemed to suit her.

He decided, in the end, to wear his darkest pair of jeans, a black t-shirt, and an unbuttoned gray dress shirt. It was the best he could do to fit in with Skye’s artsy set. He knew Tony would outshine him in his leather jacket and sinfully tight jeans, his meticulously landscaped hair and scuffed boots, but that was his lot in life, he supposed. Tony had pizazz. Clay had straight-leg jeans and chinos.

His parents were on the couch watching _Love, Actually_ for the umpteenth time when he slipped downstairs, so leaving undetected was a no-go.

“Where ya headed?” Dad asked.

Mom raised her head from its resting place on Dad’s chest, hair rumpled and eyes sleepy. She looked young for a moment, and Clay could see – without her usual worried buzzing – why his dad had fallen for her. He wondered what she was like when she wasn’t worrying about everything, but he supposed he might ask the same of himself.

“I’m picking up Tony and going to Skye’s.”

“How is Skye?” Mom asked.

“She’s better, I think. She might even be doing well.”

“I’m glad. She’s a nice girl. Funny.”

“She is. What are you guys doing tonight?”

Dad shrugged. “Pretty much this. I have some prosecco if we make it to midnight.”

“I doubt I will,” Mom said, yawning.

“Well, have fun,” Dad said. “Be safe.”

“Always,” Clay assured them before slipping out to go get Tony.

The nights had been cold and foggy, mist rolling in from the water. His headlights cut through like lanterns, illuminating his field of vision in a hazy yellow glow. He felt like a Regency-era aristocrat in a carriage, and he wondered about what his life would be like if that were really the case. The clothes looked godawfully uncomfortable, but there was something to be said for having a society so rigid that one’s role was all but set in stone. But then, he might still have the same impulses. After all, not even olde England could stamp out people wanting to fuck.

Tony came out of his house right as Clay parked, like he had been watching at the window. Clay found that endearing, kind of child-like, which Tony usually was not. He opened the passenger door and let in a rush of cold air that jettisoned the spicy smell of cologne.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Clay said in return.

“Ready to ring in the new year?”

“I don’t know,” Clay mused as he turned around and got back on the main road. “Just when I think a year is going on forever, it ends and catches me off-guard.”

“Yeah, I hear you. And it’s been a hell of a year. You know, graduation and – and everything.”

“Everything.” The trial, Tyler, the Polaroids. All that was just a few months ago, but it felt like a lifetime had passed. Now he was just another college guy, no one that people looked to for guidance or leadership.

“Do you ever miss it? The drama, the excitement?” Tony asked, his voice small. Clay glanced over to see that he was staring down at his lap, worrying at a hole in his skin-tight jeans.

“No, I don’t ‘miss it’, exactly,” Clay said. “But there is some part of me…I don’t know…some part of me that craves it a little. But not in a good way. Like a habit you can’t kick. It was a rush.”

Add this to the list of things he’d never tell anyone except Tony. He wouldn’t even tell Skye, because he knew it would make her feel like her emotional issues were just some fix for him.

They approached her apartment complex, a somewhat shoddy 1970s number with missing chunks of stucco and peeling brown trim. He knew the raggedness of the building was probably what drew her to it. He parked in an unmarked spot and cut the engine, sat there for a moment in silence.

“What about you?” he finally asked.

Tony rubbed his eyes and sighed. “Same. I feel like…I had never been that guy for anyone before. I had never been that _trusted_ before. It was, yeah, a rush.”

“But, like, all of it only came about because so many people got so fucking hurt, you know?”

“Yes, totally! And that just piles on the guilt.”

“Yep.”

Tony shook his head. “Cruel. Life is so goddamn cruel.”

“And what if – what if that was the easy part, you know? What if it just gets worse from there?”

“I think about that sometimes, too. But I can’t think about it too much, because it drags me down.” He sighed and squeaked his finger against the window, making a star. “Let’s forget about it, huh? And go party? Be young and stupid again?”

Clay smiled. “That sounds good to me.”

Once out of the car, they had no trouble figuring out which apartment was Skye’s. An elaborate _Nightmare Before Christmas_ scene adorned the window: Jack Skellington and his faithful dog Zero standing atop a curling hill.

The party was hardly what one might expect from a bunch of kids. Low, ambient music played somewhere in the living room and the small gathering sat on the couch and assorted low stools talking quietly.

Skye noticed them immediately as they came in, offering enthusiastic hugs and wet kisses on their cheeks.

“I’m so glad you guys could make it,” she said.

She introduced them to the small crowd of people, and Clay made every attempt to remember names. He tried to associate a particular feature with a person and remember their name that way. Saffron, for example, was the girl with the gold chain connecting a hoop in her ear to a hoop in her nose. He hoped he didn’t slip and call her “gold chain” or something.

He fell into a conversation with Skye and another girl about comics and drawing and despite the topic, it had a grown-up feel to it for Clay. He was discussing something he knew a lot about with someone who also knew about it. He didn’t have to defend his affinity for comics or get called a nerd, even affectionately.

Tony had gotten pulled into a conversation that Clay couldn’t hear. However, Tony’s face indicated that he was simply enduring it rather than enjoying it, and Clay’s mouth twitched into a smile. They caught eyes for a moment and Tony all but blinked out an SOS. His schadenfreude didn’t extend quite that far, so he excused himself and perched on the arm of the couch.

“Hey Clay,” Tony said. “Xavier here was just telling me all about the giant dick sculptures he makes out of scrap metal.”

“I see,” Clay said, unable to manage more as the image of giant _Transformers-_ like dicks danced through his mind.

“I find it personifies the Lacanian concept of the hidden phallus,” Xavier said.

Clay had yet to read any Lacanian concepts himself, so he just nodded.

“Uh, Tony, you want some wine?”

“Yes!” He jumped up as though he had been waiting for hours to start drinking some of the presumably cheap wine scattered atop the breakfast bar.

They wound their way through the room, poured some red wine into plastic cups, and sank into the background, a small half-hallway that led to one of the bedrooms, to drink it. It certainly wasn’t the caliber of the wine Tony pilfered from Clay’s parents’ party, but it was drinkable, rushing down his throat with limited spluttering on his part.

“Thanks for rescuing me. I only understood, like, a third of what that guy was saying, and I cared about even less than that,” Tony said.

“Any time, man.” Clay tapped his cup against Tony’s.

Skye found them in their hidden corner and stood between them, arms around their waists. It felt good having Skye touch him again, but he found it lacked the electricity of when they were dating.

“I really am glad to see you here,” she said.

“I know you are.” Clay leaned his head against hers.

“You both knew me when…when I was at my worst,” she said. “And I pushed you both away.”

“You just did what you thought was right at the time,” Clay said. “I can forgive that.”

“Good.”

“We all did some shitty things to each other and ourselves because we thought it was right at the time,” Tony said.

“I’ll drink to that,” Clay said.

They downed their wine, spluttering a little, and Skye laughed at them and called them amateurs.

Someone announced that it was eleven-thirty, and a cheer went up around the room. In its wake, the three of them stood in silence. Clay guessed that, like him, they were all thinking about the new year and the hope for washing away past sins, barreling forward into a new year. Would it be new mistakes or a new beginning? One never knew, and maybe that was the allure of the holiday. For a few days, it all seemed possible, before the old habits kicked back in and winter break ended and it was back to the same old slog from one day to the next.

Skye flitted back to where her roommate – a thick girl in a black velvet dress – was putting out more snacks on the kitchen table.

This left him alone in a corner with Tony once again. They were even more alone, it seemed, as the rest of the group – perhaps better acquainted with one another – had congregated in the small living room. Their little corner was dark, shadowed, and seemingly warmer than the larger living room. The wine made Clay’s face feel flushed, and the physical sensation called up memories of embarrassment or running too hard at recess.

Clay knew this was his moment. If he was ever going to get an answer to those questions simmering on the back burners of his mind, why not now?

“Will you be my New Year’s kiss?” he asked Tony.

Tony laughed, but Clay didn’t, which brought him up short. He cleared his throat and looked into Clay’s eyes, that amber gaze which bordered on disturbing. “Yes,” he said, definitive. Something about the fact that he said _yes_ instead of _yeah_ or _sure, why not_ threw a stone of finality onto it. They weren’t joking around here.

The next minutes passed by in jittery bursts of conversation about nothing and furtive glances at each other, every one conveying the feared promise of backing out. Clay could only speak for himself, but the only thing worse than actually kissing Tony and liking it would be _not_ kissing Tony and never knowing whether he would or wouldn’t like it.

A few minutes before midnight, Skye went around with a bottle of champagne. Or, more accurately, sparkling wine, as Clay was sure it couldn’t legally be called champagne. At any rate, it fulfilled the tradition, and he and Tony stood restlessly in anticipation, watching as she poured a little in everyone’s cup.

“All right, everyone,” Skye said, standing on a chair. “It’s time!”

She started the countdown, and they all chimed in together, forgetting for a moment that there were neighbors nestled on either side.

“Three! Two! One! Happy new year!”

And there, in the corner of his ex-girlfriend’s apartment, Clay Jensen kissed Tony Padilla for the first time. They downed their sparkling wine, put their cups on the ground, and both of them just went for it, crashing together in a kiss that meant so much more than a new year or a friendship. It cashed in on all their tension over the past year, all the things left unsaid between them, all the ways they relied on each other without saying it. Tony took the lead, thank God, hands on either side of Clay’s face, tongue against his lips. This was no stage kiss. Clay opened his mouth and it was unlike anything he’d ever felt before, the exultation dropping deep in his belly. The room – the world – faded into nothing but white noise and the only real thing was Tony’s tongue, his lips, cologne, the feeling of hard muscle and bone under his hands where he had put them at Tony’s waist. He had had good kisses before, great ones even. But this…this was what life was supposed to be.

When they separated – breathing hard, lips chafed from stubble – they stared at each other in wonder and fear because something had been _unleashed_. The knowledge passed between them as clearly as if it had been spoken out loud.

Clay looked around, returning to his senses, and was shocked to find that the whole room was not staring at them. In fact, a few people were still enjoying a New Year’s kiss and those who weren’t were happily indulging in more wine and snacks without paying a single molecule of attention to Clay and his rocked world. Skye, though, stood in the middle of this and gave him one of those canny glances that flayed him open. They locked eyes and she nodded knowingly, with just a hint of permission granted.

“Happy new year,” Tony said, slipping an arm around Clay’s waist, and it simply did not occur to him to remove it.

He didn’t know what it meant – not for him as a person or for he and Tony as friends – but in that moment, for once in his life, he just let himself be. He let himself enjoy the feeling of Tony’s strong arm around his skinny waist, the warmth of his body next to Clay’s. He worked his arm up and around Tony’s shoulders, hand dangling inelegantly.

“Happy new year,” he echoed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this series. I normally wouldn't overshare in notes like this, but I just want to say...it's been a hell of a year for me. I finally started HRT after years of thinking I couldn't, finally got some anxiety medication, and those things have helped me get back on my feet a little to start writing again. I got a rejection for an original work from an actual publisher several months ago, and that fucked me up pretty good. This story made me realize that writing is a skill that I can lose, and I feel like I almost lost it. Thank you for reading my shaky attempts at getting it back.


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